Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Here's the next stage of my soluble fabric stabiliser experiments. These six naked crazy patchwork blocks are about to head off on an adventure around Australia and New Zealand, to be embellished, embroidered and solvied by five other embroiderers before they are returned to me to decorate the last one. They are part of a round robin challenge in which each person in the "chain" sends out six naked blocks, then each recipient selects one block to embroider and embellish, before sending all six blocks along to the next person in the chain. The only stipulation is that the embellishment must use soluble fabric stabiliser in some form. This is why I've been practicing: having never used the stuff before I needed to get my skills into shape.I used small sections of my blue experimental piece as the centre of each of these six blocks, to set the colour scheme and the theme for the block. Now it's up to Jan, Sue, Faye, Alison and Joy to let their creativity run wild. Meantime, Joy's blocks should be arriving in the post at my place soon and I get first pick from her selection to embellish -- so look out for more experiments soon.In six months' time my blocks will come back to me all pretty and embroidered and not naked any more, at which point in time I will have to decide what to do with them. Going on past form, this will mean I put them in my suitcase full of UFOs and do nothing with them for several years.